


Nonfeasance

by 222Ravens



Category: Good Wife (TV), Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Crossover, Failed Ordeals, Gen, wizardry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 18:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/222Ravens/pseuds/222Ravens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Will Gardner was twelve, he found a book. </p><p>But not all Ordeals work out, not all who find the Manual become Wizards. This is the story of one of the ones that didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nonfeasance

**Author's Note:**

> This idea just sort of popped into my head, and didn't go away, so I wrote it.
> 
> Even though it's a bit of a unexpected cross-over, iit kind of made a weird sort of sense. Maybe.

When Will Gardener was twelve, he found a tattered old book at a garage sale, and brought it home with him, for no particular reason, other than a strange sort of instinct that told him it was a book that needed reading.

Once home, he'd opened it, and found something he hadn't been expecting. First stipulations, conditions, warnings, like a contract he'd seen in his father's briefcase. Then it went deeper, into dappled moonlight and star fire and the green of growing things. Into using the arguments, words, logic, and heart, into bending the world into a better sort of shape, fixing what was broken, healing what was hurt. Magic.

He shouldn't have believed it, wanted to believe it. Wanted it to be, to test it, to see if such things could be possible. And with much trepidation, under the covers of his bed, after his parents and sisters were asleep, he read a small, plain block of words to himself. _In Life's Name..._

Two weeks later, and he had talked to bushes and bicycles and his friend's pet beagle, and tuned his sister's guitar by talking the strings back into place, and a dozen other small and wondrous things. And the beauty of it, of simply talking and arguing persuasively enough, and changing things, redefining them, even, making them into something else and something more… It was wonderful.

But then came his Ordeal, so suddenly, before he felt ready. And he didn't have a plan, and the words didn't come out right, and he couldn't find the way to argue well enough, to change what he had to change, fix what needed fixing. Just a moment of self-doubt, indecision, and it was enough. He didn't do the right things in the right order, stop what needed stopping at the right time.

He'd survived it, but not passed it, he'd failed. And slowly, very slowly, the memory of that magic he had been a part of faded, and he had grown up.

The words he had kept, and the arguments, and the logic of it all, and what might have made him a great wizard made him a good lawyer. But something deeper had been lost, somewhere between the child that picked up the book, and the adult that kept it stashed, forgotten, in a box of old legal textbooks. 

He used words, and the shape and understanding of things he still has, and tried not to think when he argued against the truth, twisted reality to suit what was needed. Pretended not to care when his arguments only fit with specific purposes, when the things he spoke would break, not fix, tear down, not build up. Tried not to care, and eventually found himself not needing to try.

And if sometimes he found himself numb and hollow when he ought to feel, when sometimes there seemed, a nameless shifting sorrow in the bottom of his heart, one he couldn't pin down? That came from loving the wrong woman, and not knowing what to say when it truly mattered, and stress, and gambling debts. It came from walking the tight line between legality and success, between morality and less savoury motivation. From loving some things too much, and others too little, working too much, and living too little.

The normal pains of normal lives, of men with broken hearts and no plans and bad timing. That was all.


End file.
